Said’s critique of Orientalism also suppressed Arab scholars and drew on Arab precursors

Evidence

Said also argued that Orientalism denied Orientals the possibility of representing themselves. I have tended in this chapter to concentrate on his attitude to Western historians of the Middle East, but it is worth noting that he was no less hostile to Arabscholarship. In many cases, the contributions of Arab academics are simply ignored … But Said did not want the Arabs to represent themselves and it is he who wishes to deny them permission to speak. Yet, if one reads the anti-Orientalist essays of the Arab writers, Anouar Abdel-Malek, A. L. Tibawi and Abdallah Laroui (on all of whom see the final chapter), it becomes evident that Said could not have written Orientalism without drawing on these precursors. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 525

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how critiques of Western domination can themselves reproduce silencing — parallels themes in Coetzee-style postcolonial criticism and the debate over who gets to narrate.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: to what extent did Orientalism’s reception actually build on Arab anti-orientalist essays that Said barely credited?

Related

• Arab critics attacked Said for stereotyping Orientalism and misrepresenting Islam (similarity 0.88)
• Western scholars controlled the academic study of the Orient even as late as 1927. (similarity 0.86)
• Western cultural discourse about the Orient is a formidable structure of domination. (similarity 0.85)
• Said’s Orientalism critique has done more harm than good, delegitimizing the search for knowledge, ignoring Muslim scholars’ positive contributions, and denigrating real threats like Islamist… (similarity 0.85)
• Said defines Orientalism as a Western instrument for dominating the Orient (similarity 0.85)
• Said conceded his Orientalism arguments had all been made by earlier non-Western critics (similarity 0.84)
• Orientalism’s intent was critique, not affirmation of antithetical identities (similarity 0.84)
• Many Orientalists wrote directly for Muslim and Arab audiences (similarity 0.84)
• Arab and Islamic studies resisted the 1960s scholarly revolutions that revised other area studies (similarity 0.84)
• Said exempted the human sciences from the critique he leveled at Orientalism (similarity 0.83)
• Prominent critics of Orientalism have praised scholars deeply complicit in its assumptions. (similarity 0.83)
• Said’s Orientalism denies colonized agency while criticizing the West for silencing it. (similarity 0.83)
• Said contradicts Orientalism by treating Western literatures as autonomous. (similarity 0.83)
• Said contradicts himself by also crediting the prior critics he dismisses. (similarity 0.83)
• The Orientalist’s claim to expertise depends on the Orient’s presumed incapacity for self-interpretation (similarity 0.83)